If you love the history and culture of ancient Egypt, consider using Egyptian wall paintings as inspiration for creating your own wall mural or hanging prints of these ancient works of art on your walls.
History of Egyptian Wall Paintings
The dry desert climate of Egypt helped preserve the ancient wall paintings found inside many tombs, temples and pyramids.
Wall paintings depicted many of the activities the Egyptians performed in their daily living and the journey of the deceased into the afterworld. The paintings also pictured the gods of the underworld and the protective deities that would accompany the deceased in their eternal journey. Symbolic offerings for the deceased included agricultural harvests and bounties from hunting and fishing.
Egyptian paintings were very two dimensional, without the perspective of the three dimensional physical world. Subjects were painted with a combination of the profile view and frontal view.
Color also played an important role in Egyptian wall art. The skin of male figures had a dark reddish brown color, while female skin appeared yellow. Colors came from natural ingredients, such as desert ochre for yellow and red, chalk or lime for white and calcite mixtures for other colors. A cobalt base was used for blue and a copper base was used for green.
Important people were painted larger, such as the pharaohs and tomb masters. Servants appeared smaller. Another element of Egyptian wall paintings that helped tell the story behind the paintings was the ancient Egyptian writing system called hieroglyphs. Each hieroglyph represented a common object in ancient Egypt by either the sound of the object or the idea associated with it.
Decorating Ideas Using Egyptian Wall Art
While Egyptian art may look simple at first, it is not as easy as you might think to duplicate these images onto a wall in your home. Challenge yourself by trying to draw some Egyptian art on a piece of paper. It will help you appreciate the talent these ancient artists possessed.
Fortunately, you can buy stencils that will help you create professional looking Egyptian wall art even if you're not much of an artist. The stencils are made out of an extremely durable polyester film called Mylar and can be used multiple times. You can create a beautiful wall mural with scenes including Egyptian gods and goddesses, pharaohs, queens, hieroglyphs and more.
You can give your Egyptian themed room a personal touch by creating your own secret messages using Egyptian hieroglyphics. Scholars had tried unsuccessfully for many years to understand the meaning behind the more than 2000 hieroglyph symbols. It was the discovery of the Rosetta Stone that enabled French scholar Jean François Champollion to crack the code for this ancient Egyptian writing system. It will take some effort to understand how this writing system works, however, with the help of online dictionaries such as Hieroglyphs.net, you can look up words and have them translated. The site will even help you compose simple sentences. With this handy tool and some hieroglyph stencils, you can add your own personal messages to your Egyptian wall mural.
If you are really ambitious, you could try covering an entire wall with your Egyptian mural. However, a wall border would look great as well and is probably a more attainable goal. You could do the border on one wall, two walls or go all the way around the room with it.
If you're not ambitious enough to try painting Egyptian art on your walls, even with the help of stencils, you can still add Egyptian wall paintings to your room by purchasing prints of these wall paintings. Choose ornate looking gold frames (or have them shipped to you already framed) and hang the prints. You can find Egyptian art prints online at stores like All Posters.
Egyptian wall art has a simple yet mysterious beauty that has intrigued admirers for many generations. Add some ancient mystique to your home with this timeless cultural wall art.
